Monday, October 15, 2012

The Best Daffodil Plant List Ever

Gardeners and Designers, save this List! Naturalizing Daffodils Organized by Bloom Time

Daffodils blooms may be months away, but fall is the time to order and plant your spring bulbs. I've always said that bulbs are by far the best bang for the buck of any plant you can buy. For a few hundred bucks, you can create a spring spectacle with flowering bulbs. Bulbs are a wonderful asset for the gardener and designer. Designing with bulbs can be as complex or simple as you like. I've experimented quite a bit with different bulbs, from species tulips to woodland ephemerals, but my staple—the most reliable and rewarding spring bulbs—continues to be naturalizing daffodils.

All Narcissus are good perennial plants, but there are a handful of daffodil varieties that actually naturalize. Naturalizing plants actually reproduce new bulbs underground, thickening over time and producing more flowers. Since these bulbs reproduce rather easily, they have another advantage: they are the cheapest daffodils on the market. You can’t beat that.

In my designs, I like to mix at least three varieties of daffodils—an early, mid, and late-blooming Narcissus—in order to extend the bloom time over two months. But I’ve always had the problem of determining when daffodils bloom. Bulb catalogues are notoriously vague about this information (mostly because it varies so much depending upon where in the country you are). They often organize their catalogues by Divisions, making it almost impossible to determine what blooms when. There are so many hundreds of varieties of Narcissus, it becomes incredibly difficult to choose.

But thanks to Van Engelen company out of Connecticut for providing this wonderful resource of naturalizing Narcissus—the most affordable and reliable Narcissus on the market—and organizing them by bloom sequence. This list includes bulbs from multiple Divisions, including the ever popular Large Cupped and Small Cupped daffodils. But what I’m increasingly drawn to are the smaller, heirloom Cyclamineus, Jonquilla, Poeticus, and species daffodils. These smaller bulbs have tremendous potential for combining with other perennials in the garden, creating outstanding spring combinations. Designers and gardeners, you’ll definitely want to save this list as a resource:

My name is Tina Jin, the community manager for a new blogger community called Garden Gab (www.atomicreach.com/tribe/gardengab). This community will focus on tips, advice and personal stories on the subject. I want this Garden Gab community to be a place where expert advice and tips are consolidated in one place for beginner (like myself) and experienced gardeners.

I’m currently looking for bloggers to contribute their relevant, existing content to the community, and your blog has caught my attention. I like the way you write about gardening, and how easy and approachable your gardening experiences are.

If you decide to join, Garden Gab will publish the title of your blog posts and the first few sentences of each post. If readers want to read the full story, they’ll be pushed to your blog and give you traffic. These readers will be people who share the same passion and interests as you, which is the sole purpose of the community.

If you’re interested in joining our community, please e-mail me back at tinajin @ atomicreach.com with “Gardening” in the subject line. If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them.

What a great resource, Thomas! I had VE all marked up to order this week and now I'll have to add! I think people sometimes give up on bulbs, as deciphering which are best where and for when and for what can be far more confusing than all those interrogative pronouns I just used ;) February Gold is hard to beat for an early, and Salome and Thalia are favorites of mine.

Have you ever heard of naturalizing daffodils (and Lycoris) being allellopathic? I've noticed some of those effects when planting them in borders, and was wondering if you have had the same experience or have ways of getting around it. Now, we mostly plant Narcissi in places where such effects don't matter as much (among established groundcover, under oaks, etc.), but I'm wondering if you know the secret to naturalizing bulbs in perennials beds.

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Thomas Rainer

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Thomas Rainer is a horticultural futurist fascinated by the intersection of wild plants and human culture. A landscape architect by profession and a gardener by obsession, Thomas has worked on projects such as the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, but is happiest puttering in his small garden in Washington, D.C.

Thomas thinks you should use more natives, plant more daringly, and loosen up that landscape, for crying out loud.

Gardens are points of connection, grounding, and continuity.
Well loved spaces amplify living.

Nature should be interpreted, not imitated in designed landscapes.

Planting design should be bold, daring, and uncompromising.

We can reclaim biodiversity and habitats within human landscapes.

A good day ends with dirt under my nails, grass stains on clothes, and dreams of the next garden.

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